Archived Bulletins

DESIGN CLASS VISITS GHANAIAN SOFTWARE COMPANY

By Eric Acheampong
Class of 2006

The Ashesi's class of 2006 visited Accra-based software company, SoftTribe accompanied by Design lecturer, Mr. Nii Teiko Evans-Anfom. The trip was preceded by a lecture delivered by Mr. Herman Chinery-Hesse, the CEO of the software company. SoftTribe is a software development company situated in the center of Accra. It was established to help develop software programs that would "fast-track" the activities of companies in the industrial, financial and manufacturing sectors of the West African sub-region. The aim of the visit was to give students a first-hand experience of how initial design affects the production process of a particular product.

During his lecture, Mr. Hesse emphasized the processes involved in designing a project. These processes included problem identification, stating of objectives, research, constraints, testing and evaluation. According to Mr. Hesse, "every design aims at solving a problem by fitting it into a particular context." Furthermore, he said, "research and development are arguably the most critical point in designing a project."

At SoftTribe, students interacted with computer programmers and had the opportunity to ask questions about the work they were conducting. Mr. Rudolph, a C++ programmer, participated in a question and answer session. Students had the opportunity to observe several software packages under various stages of development - from the interface design to the actual coding process. Much of the work that was being conducted was related to what Ashesi students were studying in computer programming in Visual Basic.

In his presentation, Mr. Rudolph enumerated some of the significant achievements of SoftTribe which included the development of the Antrak and Esusu software. He stressed that factors such as cost, time, and marketing as some of the major constraints affecting software development. He lauded Ashesi's mission and challenged the women of Ashesi to develop more of an interest in computer programming and become members of the SoftTribe.

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